John Spencer, 58, TV Actor Starring on 'The West Wing,' Dies

John Spencer, the Emmy Award-winning actor who played the shrewd, craggy White House chief of staff on the NBC drama "The West Wing," died yesterday morning in Los Angeles, four days before his 59th birthday.

He had a heart attack Thursday night and was taken to Olympia Medical Center, where he was declared dead shortly after 10 a.m. yesterday, said Ron Hofmann, his publicist.

In an eerie parallel to life, his character on "The West Wing," Leo McGarry, suffered a heart attack last season that forced him to give up his job as chief of staff to President Josiah Bartlet, played by Martin Sheen. McGarry recovered and, in the season finale, became the running mate of Matt Santos, the Democratic presidential nominee, played by Jimmy Smits. The campaign is a critical plotline for the show, which is in the middle of production for its seventh season. Mr. Spencer had received Emmy nominations for his role every year from 1999 to 2004, winning as a best supporting actor in 2002.

He made his breakthrough in the 1990 film "Presumed Innocent," playing the role of Detective Dan Lipranzer alongside Harrison Ford. "His name, all of a sudden, became at the tip of everyone's tongue," Mr. Hofmann said. Mr. Spencer then solidified his reputation as a character actor, playing a stream of lawyers and government officials, including the fiery New York transplant Tommy Mullaney on "L.A. Law."

By the late 1990's, Mr. Spencer had so deeply ensconced himself as a sharp-witted public servant that he was cited as a model for the chief of staff on "The West Wing." Aaron Sorkin, creator of the series, recalled last night: "I said to the casting director, 'We need someone like John Spencer.' And the casting director said, 'What about John Spencer?' And I said, 'We will never get John Spencer.' " But Mr. Spencer said yes.

Mr. Spencer was born on Dec. 20, 1946, in New York City to John and Mildred Speshock, a truck driver and a waitress, and grew up in Totowa, N.J. He saw acting as an escape from his lower-middle-class upbringing. At 16 he left home to attend the Professional Children's School in New York City, landing his first television role as Henry Anderson on "The Patty Duke Show." After high school, he attended Fairleigh Dickinson University but left without graduating.

In his early career, roles were scarce, and Mr. Spencer worked as a waiter to support himself in understudy and regional theater roles in the 1970's. "People don't know what to do with a character actor who is 20," he said in an interview with TV Guide in 2000.

In 1981 he won an Obie Award for his role as Mark in John Byrne's Off Broadway play "Still Life." He remained committed to live theater, appearing most recently as Martin Glimmer, a worn-out trumpeter in "Glimmer, Glimmer and Shine," in Los Angeles and New York.

Mr. Spencer, a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, took solace in his lifelong hobby, gardening. As a child, he earned a blue ribbon from the local 4-H club for tending peas and beans in his family's vegetable garden. At his Bel-Air home, he continued to grow roses, hollyhocks, lilacs and other species common to the Northeast rather than to Southern California. He still thought of himself as a New Yorker, keeping the rental apartment he had lived in while a struggling actor until last year, when he bought an apartment.

Mr. Spencer was married and divorced in the 1970's. There are no immediate survivors.

Correction: December 24, 2005, Saturday An obituary last Saturday about John Spencer, an actor on the television series "The West Wing," misidentified the author of the Off Broadway play "Still Life," for which Mr. Spencer won an Obie in 1981. It was Emily Mann, not John Byrne. (Mr. Byrne wrote a different play with the same title.)

We are continually improving the quality of our text archives. Please send feedback, error reports,
and suggestions to archive_feedback@nytimes.com.

A version of this obituary; biography appears in print on December 17, 2005, on Page B00008 of the National edition with the headline: John Spencer, 58, TV Actor Starring on 'The West Wing'. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe